YouGov finds voters suspicious of David Davis' motives

"The Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has resigned as an MP in order to fight a by-election in his constituency on the issue of 42 days. Which of these statements comes closer to your view?

He is doing it mainly as a genuine act of principle in order to defend civil liberties: 29%

He is doing it mainly as a cynical ploy to help the Conservative Party and his own career: 41%

Comments

Of course Davis didn't actually resign to fight a bye-election over 42 days. He resigned to fight a bye-election on the issues surrounding the EROSION OF CIVIL LIBERTIES and the Governments PORK-BARREL TACTICS.

Interesting how Yougov seem to be teaming up with the 'serious' newspapers to distort the narrative?

don’t understand it all, if he was a man of principle and seeks to take it to the people, then why fight it in a constituency that he knows he can return a majority, fight it in a constituency where there is no clear majority, but then he may not get is job back! I do have a few unanswered questions. Does a resigning MP get severance pay i.e a lump of money, if so how much, who pays for the bye election, if it the local council and its estimated at 30K, i guess that a least one home help for a year that no one is going to see

if the papers and online media(tv) actually gave a fair pictur of the david davis events ie presenting both sides and not just criticising david davis then maybe , just maybe people would be more favourable - but then that would involve the westminster village media developing a conscience

John Leonard, what you say is true. We have never previously had a Labour government for this long and the normal checks and balances that come into play when a Conservative government is elected and rolls back the state haven't applied for the last eleven years. So statism has had time to build its superstructure without fear of it being dismantled.

Until recently statist government felt confident enough to speed up its legislative base but the recent surge in Conservative support has caught them in mid-gallop. David Davis is rightly exposing this gallop to statism with its oppresive style of legislating. To paraphrase a true champion of freedom, Mr Reagan, it looks like Mr Davis may have got there, just in time!

If DD had actually resigned on an issue that voters actually cared about he might have struck a chord. The civil libbers who dominate these threads need to realise that voters like CCTV and locking suspect terrorists up. Cameron is astute enough to realise that a doctrinaire approach to 42 days is dangerous. Crazy Davis doesn't.

I am deeply troubled by some of the comments made on this thread.It appears to me that some individuals are prepared to doubt David Davis's motivations whatever he says or does.

It is absolutely fine to disagree with the stand he is making and indeed to support 42 days but to question Davis's integrity is to misunderstand the man.We should let these unworthy arguements come from the hacks and what is left of the Brownite cabal.

I would declare a bias here,I voted for Davis in the leadership campaign.That is not to say I don't respect the work Cameron is doing and obviously sincerely hope that he gets into number 10.

There are however some things that transcend the Westminster village.The insidious march of the state into all of our private lives is one.The problem with this is that the real issues are not fully understood and the implications of what our Government are doing will only be felt in the future.The pressing demands of struggling to survive the fiscal assault of New Labour is the number one priority.

The real arguements about the liberties we all are entitled to expect must be heard.We need more politicians like Davis not Blair.Let us not do the work of Brown for him by smearing Davis with the same tawdry tag that could be hung around the neck of any Labour frontbencher.

The Westminster Village should not tell us how to think about this whole issue nor how it will play.

"The one single question on Davis (suggesting it was very much shoved in at the last minute as the news broke) asks if people think it was a genuine act of principle or a cynical ploy to help the Conservative party or his own career - 29% thought it was an act of principle, 41% thought it was a cynical ploy. Of course, this would have been asked people people had had time to digest the news or read the print media’s reaction, so opinions may since have changed massively - given the last responses from David Cameron and media speculation of internal ructions and Conservative bewilderment, I suspect considerable fewer people would now think it a cunning party ruse! I’ll be more confident judging the public’s response to David Davis - both directly and in terms of voting intention - when we see polls conducted once the news had time to sink in." Anthony Wells, UK Polling Report

So in one poll we went up and the other is unchanged. YouGov (polled entirely post 'Hero Davis') gives us a bigger potential vote share than Labour and LibDems combined, and a huge predicted majority.

AND THESE POLLS ARE SOMEHOW BAD?

It's like we're living in a parallel universe to that which some of the media inhabit. I think I've found the 'Quantum theory of politics'!
Meanwhile Brown is... yep you guessed it! He's dithering, some things never change.
C'mon Labour, bring it on! I'm sure you can find someone who will fight an election on one of Labour's policies. No?..just one though, they wouldn't have to defend the whole pile of ****.
Where's the Labour analogue of Shami Chakrabarti's 'Celebs for Davis'? Can you not 'round up the usual suspects'? (no pun intended)

"He is doing it mainly as a genuine act of principle in order to defend civil liberties: 29%

He is doing it mainly as a cynical ploy to help the Conservative Party and his own career: 41%

Don’t know: 30%"

I have no argument with the first option but the 2nd is as biased as it gets. "Cynical ploy" what sort of question is this ? I think its a statement, and clearly demonstartes how the press and poll pundits distort politics in this country.

Good for you Patrick Ratnaraja, and compared to many of the spelling mistakes or grammatical errors (which make it difficult to understand WHAT the blogger means - grammar is there to make prose easier to understand!), in evidence on CH, just getting the i and the e mixed up is peenuts!

"to reiterate, the comparison is pretty much worthless. The diffence in Tory support between the “pre-Davis” polling and “post-Davis” polling is 7 points. The margin of error on the sample sizes for those two sub-sets is around 5 points. More importantly, you interview different socio-economic groups at different times of the day when doing a poll, so the two groups won’t be comparable."

come on people it s just a big joke, the guys got nothing to loose all to win, on this stunt who wants a big hitter on the back benches waiting in the side lines for the leader to make a mistake and step up to the mark, does any believe he is going to loose the bye election, it just a way of unnerving the leader of the opposition, who has now no option other than to support him.

Who knows? Maybe Labour will put up a Pro-42 Days candidate that wins around H&H, afterall Widders and Tim Montgomerie are convinced.
I know it seems unlikely in that their policy is evil rubbish and any Labour toadie prepared to do it is probably terrible at rational argument..BUT you never know.

I am absolutely in favor of what Davis is trying to do. Of course the Government will attempt to rubbish it. However it really is about time we had a debate about the creeping nature of the surveillance state and the erosion of long held liberties by this increasingly authoritarian labour administration. Phil I don't agree that Davis has nothing to loose if this campaign goes badly his career is finished. Also it is going to interesting to see how the "people" will react if Brown doesn't bother to contest this seat. Of course if we had a constructive press in the UK , failing to contest the seat would be portrayed correctly as excepting the rightness of Davis's stand. Sadly it appears Brown has taken the view that he can trust the press to run Davis into the ground for him.

Phil makes a very good point, there is a real cost to the tax payers of the country of running a bye election. However I think in this case it is money well spent, as there really is an important principle being discussed here. Perhaps in the future an MP who calls such an election, should be expected to find the funding from his or his party's purse. That is something for the future perhaps. Otherwise this could become a habit.

just heard Davis on question time, how many here could hold their hands up and vote for him purely on the 42 or what ever days detention all the media reports say that he would loose on the one point, but i guess he is banking on the sheep just voting conservative, to return him, id love for him to stand up and direct is votes to vote on their beliefs, rather than their party lines, but i guess thats a pipe dream

Iain Martin has an excellent piece today on the strange contrast between the noisiness of Davis's supporters (not least on here) and the suspicion of the rest of the population.

He suggests that the Davis fans are the 1/3 of the country who are perpetually angry about everything (people like Iain on here would be a classic example). The rest of the population just finds them - and Davis's actions - a bit strange.

Rod Sellers June 15 @ 07:11
"..DD has connected with an underlying contempt for conventional politics."

I think that comment gets to the heart of the matter. Whilst Davis's action might well be illogical and perverse, the very fact of it strikes a chord with those who (despite supporting the 42 days that DD objects to ) see it as a symbol of rejection of the smug complacency of those who think the political furniture just needs to be rearranged a little, rather than replaced.

Alexander King refers to the quoted 1/3 of the country that is permanently angry about something. I would reinterpret that as 1/3 strongly for a new political dimension, rather than being grumpy about anything & everything. If you consider that much of the country doesn't seem to care enough to bother to vote, that proportion is more like 2/3 of those who do care. Those that moan without voting don't deserve to have their views taken into consideration. They moan that voting makes no difference; well, it would if they did!

I'm not one of those who, for instance, want PR. I'm a fan of First Past The Post but just wish that the top three runners didn't appear to wear the same sorts of colours and indeed swap between themselves at times.